Proposal for high-speed rail bridges in downtown San Jose raise alarm

Dave Mansen, the regional project manager for the California High-Speed Rail Authority, explains alternative plans to
putting the new rail line along existing Caltrain tracks during a meeting in San Jose's Gardner
community on Oct. 6, 2009.

Imagine an 87-foot-tall viaduct looming over downtown San Jose, zipping trains through the heart of the city en route to San Francisco or Los Angeles.

San Jose residents and city officials are starting to wake up to that reality, and a growing chorus is worried about what it would mean.

Neighborhood activists and the city's Downtown Association have teamed up to decry what they say are "track and station structures as high as nine stories" that would divide the city's core from nearby neighborhoods like Willow Glen.

Officials with the state's High Speed Rail Authority are trying to tamp down the furor, saying only a small portion of the tracks might reach that height — and even then, only under one configuration being weighed.

But on Thursday, after a request from San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and two city councilmen, rail authority board member Rod Diridon said the board will keep alive — for now — a proposal to bring the tracks into downtown via an underground tunnel.

Just last month, Diridon cited engineers' reports to dismiss the idea as far too costly. And he and Reed both acknowledge that the odds against a downtown tunnel remain long.

A similar controversy has been playing out for months on the Peninsula, where many residents who voted to support the rail project say they didn't realize the superfast trains likely would run on a 20-foot elevated track.

But the debate over how high-speed rail could change the landscape has only recently picked up momentum in San Jose.

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Reed and Councilmen Sam Liccardo and Pierluigi Oliverio, who represent the neighborhoods through which the trains most likely will run, got into the action Wednesday, asking the rail authority to keep studying the underground option.

That option had been favored by a Good Neighbor Committee of residents and entities such as the Downtown Association chosen to help plan for changes in the neighborhoods surrounding Diridon Station — including high-speed rail, a Bay Area Rapid Transit station and, perhaps, a major-league baseball stadium.

Yet even as Reed called the rail board's Thursday decision "good news," his letter seemed to recognize the challenges facing a tunnel.

"We do not presume an underground option will prove to be the most feasible," Reed wrote, "nor do we overlook the extraordinary costs that an underground option poses."

In an interview, Reed told the Mercury News, "We need to get the facts, and the way you get the facts is to do the analysis."

The $45 billion bullet-train plan, supported by bonds that state voters approved in 2008 with Proposition 1A, is projected to run trains from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 2 hours and 40 minutes, beginning in 2020.

The authority's board last month reviewed several options for alignments into and from downtown. The authority's engineers said laying the track underground would be too expensive because of loose soil, a high groundwater table and the need to dig under a proposed BART tunnel that also would stop at Diridon Station.

Rod Diridon said Thursday that the estimated cost — at least $2 billion for the two miles of tunnel — is five to seven times more expensive than the average cost per mile of the system built above ground.

Still, the decision to keep studying the option is another step in the rail authority's quest to navigate the politics challenging the bullet trains. The board also is considering routing trains through tunnels or trenches along parts of the Peninsula, although that too would be much more expensive than elevated or surface-level tracks.

The alternative routes will be evaluated as part of an environmental review expected to be completed in 2011.

In related news, the rail authority's executive director, Mehdi Morshed, announced at Thursday's board meeting that he will retire at the end of March.

The 72-year-old said he wants to spend more time with his grandchildren. And after working on the high-speed rail project for the past 11 years, he said, it's time to move on.

As for fears of a nine-story structure bisecting downtown San Jose, Diridon said the elevated train track's highest point would occur only over the Highway 87-Interstate 280 interchange. Otherwise, he said, its height would come down to about 40 feet, stacked above the existing Caltrain track in and out of the rail station that bears his name.

Among others pleased by the board's decision was Henry Cord, who represents the Downtown Association on the Good Neighbor Committee.

"What we don't want to occur is building a structure that in 30 years we say is the worst thing we did, and now we have to tear it down," Cord said. "If it's not possible to go underground, then we have to find a solution about how it could work above ground."

What: California High Speed Rail Authority leaders will hold an open house on routes from the Diridon Station south to Merced.When: 6 to 8 p.m., TuesdayWhere: Roosevelt Community Center, 901 E. Santa Clara St.What: California High Speed Rail Authority leaders will give a presentation on possible routes from Diridon Station north to the Santa Clara County line.When: 6 p.m., ThursdayWhere: Bellarmine College Preparatory, Liccardo Center, 960 W. Hedding St. Signs will direct participants to parking and the venue. Information: www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/library.asp?p=8281